It was 1981 when Ottavio Mai and Giovanni Minerba, released their first film “Dalla vita di Piero”, which was acclaimed at the Cinema Giovani film festival of Turin and was presented in a number of international festivals. It was a film that definitively broke away from the stereotyped portrayal of homosexuals in the cinema of the time, where they appeared only in marginal roles, reduced to stock “comic” characters and social rejects. It was the success of this film that inspired Mai and Minerba to create an international festival of films on homosexual themes, “Da Sodoma a Hollywood” (From Sodom to Hollywood). After they had tried for several years to stage this cinema review, in 1986 it was finally recognised as a significant cultural event, thanks to Marziano Marzano, the anticonformist Councillor for Culture for the City of Torino, and also obtained financial backing from the governments of the Provincia di Torino and Regione Piemonte. The event became officially a Festival in 1989 and was recognised by the Ministry for Tourism and the Entertainment Industry in 1990. Since 2006 the Festival has been managed by a foundation - Fondazione Maria Adriana Prolo - Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino. Universally acknowledged to be one of the major Italian cinema events of international renown, this Festival is the oldest LGBT-themed festival in Europe and the 3rd oldest in the world.The current director is Vladimir Luxuria.